Klout gets better for users, worse for marketers?

Klout has rolled out updates to its service, including adjustments to individuals scores for increased accuracy, more transparency and a new site design.

The most significant change and one that caught my eye was the introduction of “Moments”, Klout’s new feature claiming to give greater insights into your influence online.

Moments appears to be a new feature that is set to highlight the reasons behind the shift in your Klout score, making the service more transparent. However the introduction of this new feature has come at the cost of the three previous measures – True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact.

From a digital marketer’s perspective, simply taking a user’s Klout score at face value was never enough. Marketers need to be able to understand why a user has a high score, in order to ensure certain objectives are being met.

For example, those looking to spread content virally may look at users with a high Amplification probability. Looking to change public perception, you may look at targeting users with a high True Reach or Network Impact.

There is a big difference in people sharing your content or responding to it. Dependent on the type of content you are trying to push, be that perhaps a video or marketing message, exactly who you are targeting needs to be precisely tailored to suit your campaign.

True Reach, Amplification and Network Impact were three brief scores that made up a small but important part of the algorithm I personally use to build up a list of who I believe are the most important people to target undergoing a campaign.

I’m worried that Klout are playing too much on individuals’ narcissistic emotions rather than concentrating on delivering an accurate, worthwhile service that delivers a true benefit to the world. Otherwise they may as well just go back to developing computer games. They’re probably more lucrative anyway…

However, every cloud does have a silver lining. The introduction of Wikipedia pages as a measure of influence has brought @JustinBieber down from his perfect Klout score of 100 to 92, whilst boosting @BarackObama to 99, taking into account his real world influence.